It’s not your imagination. Zoom or virtual presentations do suck both figuratively and literally. They sap energy and magnify flaws. Presenting online is challenging. What might you do to improve? Understand the challenges, adapt your presentation delivery, and enhance your skills.
Five Habits of Effective Public Speakers
Imagine your success when you consistently deliver more effective presentations. You can do that when you develop the habits of effective public speakers. Success in any pursuit is the result of establishing smarter habits. Study and adopt these five habits of effective public speaking.
Engage Your Audience with Three Types of Questions
Questions are much more engaging than statements. Use questions throughout your presentation to keep your audience interested. Sprinkle these three types of questions within your presentation to make it feel more like a conversation instead of a lecture. Use all three types of questions and you’ll keep your audience actively engaged during your presentation.
Why Should You Use the Chat in Zoom
The chat encourages people to think. What could be a higher form of engagement than that? The chat offers you as the meeting leader or presenter benefits that you can’t enjoy in a live presentation. You will tend to get a higher percentage of your audience actively contributing because there are those who prefer not to speak up but find it easier to write a short chat. It feels safer to chat then to speak.
Why So Serious? Are you cold to your audience?
Heath Ledger, as the Joker, delivered that line in the Batman movie, The Dark Knight. The Joker delivered that line as he explained the permanent smile on his face. Why so serious?
Use Rhetorical Questions in Your Presentation
Use rhetorical questions during your presentation to better engage your audience. This technique is simple and powerful. It’s surprising that more speakers don’t make better use of this technique.
This works especially well, when delivering detailed technical information. That means this is an effective technique for engineers, scientists, economists, IT experts, and other technical specialists.
Three Tips to Begin Your Presentation with More Confidence
Those opening moments of your presentation are critical to establish your credibility and confidence with the audience. Don’t waste that time trying to work up your confidence. Instead, start with confidence and convey that with your first words. You owe that to your audience before you can expect them to listen to your presentation.